Karma. I had always sort of believed in it, but I didn't really know for sure.
The most I had heard about karma was from Jim Rome, who claims players are capable of falling victim to the \Jungle Karma"" if they ditch an interview or fail to appear on his shows, or more often, have a stellar performance or a streak of quality games after appearing on his shows. Because he has evidence of such ""Jungle Karma"" I believed it to be true. But I have yet to be invited to The Jim Rome Show, so I didn't think I could fall victim to karma.
Boy, was I wrong. While not a victim of the ""Jungle Karma,"" I have fallen victim to the Michigan Karma. I should have known-seriously, has anything good ever come from Michigan?
It all started back in 1999. My friend Paul and I decided to come to Madison for the big Michigan/Wisconsin game because it was the first time GameDay came here. Things seemed to be going well-that is, until Chris Chambers decided to drop a pass in the end zone that hit him in the numbers and would have won the game for Wisconsin.
Fine, maybe that was a fluke.
Fast forward to last season. Disgusted with the Badgers' performance to that point, I decide to sell my voucher and boycott the game between UW and Michigan State. I wound up watching Lee Evans score five times on the way to a 56-21 drubbing of the Spartans-on TV.
So the logical choice last weekend would have been for me to stay home and watch one of the best college hockey series all year at the Kohl Center, right? Well, that may have been the right choice-for both me and the Badgers-yet I decided a trip to Michigan State was in order.
But the gods-and Barry Alvarez-did not want me in East Lansing, Mich., Saturday.
The trip started out fine. We hit the Chicago rush hour, but that was no problem. We just stopped for dinner. We all made it through Gary, Ind. alive-something that is hard to do. But as soon as we hit Michigan things got messy.
An hour and 45 minutes out of Lansing we start to hear a rattle. Seconds later the engine cuts out, we pull over and smoke begins to pour out from under the hood-not usually a good sign. The car is out of oil.
No big deal, we think, so we call a tow truck to tow us the mile to a gas station and bought some oil. But instead of starting when Arvind turned the key, all we got was a ""click."" Alan, the tow truck driver, drove us 10 miles back to his station and told us someone would look at the car in the morning. There's nothing like being called ""Tex"" and having the most stereotypical tow truck driver in the world call you and your buddies a bunch of idiots.
Of course, Alan's shop wasn't just in any old town. Nope, it was in Benton Harbor, home of race riots little more than a year ago. Reasoning-and Barry-would have told us we were not supposed to be at the game, but instead shack up at the Best Value Inn for the night and find a way to get the hell out of dodge in the morning. But we were determined to get to the game.
One of the best parts of the entire trip was putting back a couple cold ones, pondering a game of shuffleboard at the Best Value as we waited for a friend to drive down from East Lansing to pick us up and take us back. Another was making it out of Benton Harbor without being killed.
All in all, a would-be six hour trip took us 11 hours, but it was worth it because we were going to see the Badgers go 10-0 for the first time in school history. Again, things did not go according to plan. A 49-14 embarrassment added insult to injury.
It didn't end there. A friend drove over after the game to join us in ""drowning our frustrations."" When she went to leave, her car had been towed.
We did our best to make sure nobody got near us for the rest of the night, rented a car in the morning and made our way back home. Of course, we put our lives on the line once more, stopping in Benton Harbor to gut Arvind's car and lay her to rest after finding out the engine was shot.
So my apologies go out to the Badger faithful for ruining a perfectly good season. Hopefully this time I learned my lesson, and when the Spartans and Wolverines come up in the schedule next season, I will stay away from those games. I learned one thing for sure: The only reasons I will go back to the not-so-great state of Michigan is to cross a couple tasks off of our list of 100 sports things to do before we die, a list that we made on our long, strange trip.
Moral of the story-no more games involving Wisconsin and any team from Michigan, and only return to the state to go to the Big House and play shuffleboard at the Best Value Inn in Benton Harbor, Mich. Unless, that is, I make my debut appearance on The Jim Rome Show to pick up some Jungle Karma.
Eric is a junior planning to major in journalism. Share your stories of Michigan frustration with him at ejschmoldt@wisc.edu.
